


Ship-able Moments--One Of My Favorite "Awwwww" Scenes.

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Essays, M/M, Meta, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 11:17:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19317094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: What it says on the tin: we all have our moments, and Good Omens: The TV Series provides a gazillion. But this one I haven't seen mentioned in particular, and yet it charms me.So. A meta about the sequences outside the gates of the Taddfield US Air Force Base.





	Ship-able Moments--One Of My Favorite "Awwwww" Scenes.

The three have ridden as two. Shadwell, Madame Tracy, and Aziraphale have reached Taddfield Air Force Base. Aziraphale is trying, with limited success, to sort things out and get everyone on base, including himself, Shadwell, and his "horse," Madame Tracy, whom he wears with real effectiveness. (Aside from a some-time actress and director to Miranda Richardson: you rock, woman. That was a performance that exceeds belief, fully up there with the later performances of Sheen and Tennant as each other's characters in the "trial and execution" sequences. Really, she shifts so plausibly and convincingly between Aziraphale and Madame Tracy, that while it surely helps to have the actual voices cue-ing the viewer to who controls the body at any given moment, it's not needed...and may even be best at moments when both characters are in concert... About which more later, maybe...) Anyway... Aziraphale is in a fluster, driven to fix it all, not able to count on supernatural backup, unable to risk waiting to see if Crowley shows up because so much worse is even MORE likely to show up. 

And then we hear the pounding music of Queen, and the Bentley approaches down the long drive, flames pouring from its chassis, mad-eyed demon at the wheel.

There is nothing to not-like from that moment on if you ship our angel and demon pair. And as for performances... 

Again, a hat-tip to Miranda Richardson, who safely performs Aziraphale until Adam can return him to Michael Sheen... It starts with her. Aziraphale, seeing the car coming, lights up--and it's pure, unadulterated Aziraphale radiant joy, with the blinding innocent adoration. He's come--Crowley has done the impossible, and come!

The door of the Bentley swings open, and Crowley is out--and posing. Tennant caught that perfectly--yes, for one moment he's just surviving, but the second he sees his angel--and there's no doubt he sees His Angel inside Madame Tracy--he's posing. He's too cool for school, yes indeed. Too sexy for his shirt. He's showing off.

Watch Tennant slope his infatuated way from the car to His Angel, turning the macadam into a lover's cat-walk. Meanwhile Richardson preens, in perfect, adoring Aziraphale style--practically Sweet Polly Purebred swooning over Underdog. Now--watch for it--Tennant has eyes for no one but His Angel. He turns a mere observation into a tiny little love letter. "Hey, Aziraphale. I see you found a ride. Nice dress." In three tiny sentences he makes it clear he does, indeed, SEE Aziraphale inside his new guise--but also finds the new guise fetching. 

Richardson picks it up seamlessly, again in adoring Aziraphale mode: all the innocence and besotted charm of the ingenue, yet overlaid with Madame Tracy being perfectly happy to be complimented, too. Madame Tracy knows her first bond is to her dear, craggy old Shadwell. But she's not an innocent where Aziraphale is--she can look at Crowley and know exactly how appealing he is in exactly how many ways, spiritual and earthy, and she is perfectly happy to be flattered by this long streak of demonic sass. But Aziraphale is still riding his horse. See him? He's begging for help. "This young man won't let us in."

Now--watch Tennant bend in to His Angel--a guy gesture most of us have seen before, that stakes a claim while creating a tiny, temporary garden, a bower for two lovers alone. He makes eye contact, insofar as the shades allow. He's grown two inches and puffed his chest out. "Leave it to me." The swagger. The Hero. The soot-covered knight. And he moves on, still showing off. Still posing for the Angel behind him. And behind him, the Angel is trotting along, filling in the information, accepting the teasing, relieved. In love. His hero really did come for him. 

And then, just in case you missed it--the reprise. The Four and Dog arrive. The guard scarpers off after them--and the Bentley blows up, dragging even swaggering, posturing Crowley off point to go "have a moment." 

Again, watch them. Aziraphale, as played by Miranda Richardson, is ripped out of his romantic haze as his hero goes to cry at the funeral pyre of the Bentley--the cowboy kissing his horse. Richardson's performance blends so beautifully with Sheen's voice, as she hits him with some of the coldest, most bastardly lines in the show: after all, the demon has to do the dirty work so that Aziraphale can still be "the nice one." But then Richardson's face shifts, just enough, frustration blending with spousal compassion...and he's off, at a clip, to save the day--and his dear Crowley--himself. Richardson's got the body language down cold, blending Madame Tracy and a decisive Aziraphale rising to the occasion, taking over, saving the day, in what may (or may not) be his first "kill," foreshadowing the soon-to-come moment when he concludes that he, not Crowley, is going to have to be the one to kill Adam. (A scene in which Crowley will more than return the cold bastardy of pushing the dirty job onto the other...) Snap--the fingers snap and the soldier is gone. (And the look and the eye-roll shot at Shadwell and his deluded awe of his own Mighty Finger of Fate more than tells you that Aziraphale is in charge, though perhaps echoed by a worldly Madame Tracy just a tiny bit.)

In the aftermath we see Crowley pull himself together. His second approach to Aziraphale is that of someone who's still trying to swagger and pose, but who knows he's lost ground. His compliment to Aziraphale, though fully earned, is a bit grumpy...just a bit. And still a bit resentful at being distracted from his mourning and scolded. Only when danger approaches does he admit--confess?--that he needs to "get over the car thing," does he know what he's up to again. Even then, one suspects that at least in part he NEEDS Aziraphale twittering behind him and getting his vocabulary wrong to settle him and smooth his ruffled feathers. And Aziraphale! Again, hat-tip Richardson. Aziraphale knows he's hurt Crowley's feelings in a number of different ways--and further that his finger-snap stole Crowley's thunder. After all, the Angel can rescue himself, really. They both know that in spite of the romance tropes they're indulging in with each other, Aziraphale remains a Principality, the Angel of the Eastern Gate, worker of miracles. It's not boy-girl, hero-damsel. It's angel and demon, and Crowley's swagger and manly heroism doesn't play entirely properly when his beloved can disappear enemies with that sort of ease. 

Through all this, Richardson is playing Aziraphale in relation to Crowley--but also finding a moment, a beat, a look, an angle of the body, to also keep Madame Tracy alive inside her own body, as she gravitates to HER beloved, Shadwell. They are two humans caught in a game far too big for them, and Madame Tracy understands that even if Shadwell doesn't entirely. This could be her last chance to play the damsel herself--a role she will gladly reclaim when Adam later frees her from Aziraphale. Watching the actress catch tiny opportunities to keep her primary character alive and well while brilliantly portraying Sheen's character is honestly quite stunning. It reminds me of a very few times in my life when I was given a competitive challenge of the sort that makes you grin all toothy-like--very crocodilian--and murmur sweetly, "Anything you can do I can do better." As though having read the final sequences and knowing the shell game that will be played later, she's out to prove in advance that she's as good as either of the two boys. And she is...she really is. Hats off to her!

And so, Crowley at the head of the line, they go on to face down the Four Horsemen, the Hogsback Wood Four, the Archangel Gabriel, and Beelzebub, former Prince of the Seraphim and now Prince of Hell. The story goes on. 

But that sequence outside the gate--the push-pull of romantic roles and brilliant performances, the sense from beginning to end that no matter who's *playing* him Aziraphale is there, adoring his dear demon, and that Crowley sees him, no matter what body he's in--and that he wants to *show off* for him! Oh, my. Crowley wants to be the apple of Aziraphale's eye, and he hurts when his own mourning for his Bentley and Aziraphale's own assertion of the hero role shifts the balance. There's an entire romantic story told from first arrival to final reconciliation. 

That's my contribution to "shipping moments." That's the one I haven't myself seen mentioned, and yet one I find particularly special. A sequence that could have been ruined had Richardson or Tennant been any less skilled than they are instead works as a fully acceptable bridge between Sheen and Sheen, with Richardson contributing as sensitive and in-character an Aziraphale as you need without losing her grip on her own character. It deepens all the relationships, and she's the lynch-pin who has to keep it all working. 

I hope someone stopped her after shooting that day and said, "Damn, woman, you rock." Because she did--and as a result, I've got a sense of how MUCH our demon adores his Angel, and how equally much our angel adores his demon, all mixed in with how much Madame Tracy loves--and understands--her Shadwell.


End file.
